Summary

For courses in introduction to criminal justice. The best-selling introduction to criminal justice text of all time, Criminal Justice Today, 8e sets the standard with its thematic approach, timely, comprehensive coverage and complete multimedia supplements package. The central theme of the book-how do our society and the criminal justice system balance freedom and safety-has been the book's defining feature since the first edition and is more important now than ever before. Criminal Justice Today 8e provides students with the most up-to-date, engaging and authoritative introduction to the criminal justice system available today.

Table of Contents

In a substantially revised eighth edition, Criminal Justice Today continues to set the standard by which all other introductory criminal justice textbooks are measured

The hallmark features that have made Criminal Justice Today the most widely read college criminal justice textbook form the core of this new edition

They include: A thematic approach that contrasts the justice system's twin goals of ensuring public order and safety while guaranteeing individual rights

The book's theme, present since the first edition, is more relevant today and continues to significantly influence the direction of American society

Timely content, including current issues such as efforts to enhance homeland security, concerns about restrictions on individual freedoms in the face of terrorist threats, corporate crime, identity theft, high-technology crime, and special issues such as policing an ever-changing multicultural society

A futures orientation, including a special chapter on the future of criminal justice that points the way to and helps students appreciate the unchanging foundation upon which American criminal justice rests

Accessible technology, including easy-to-use digital tools that make it simple to stay abreast of the latest news, research reports, and government-sponsored studies of relevance to the study of criminal justice

The eighth edition also brings exciting new features to Criminal Justice Today

Among them are: Expanded police coverage, including an entirely new chapter on police organization and management

The criminal justice system's response to terrorism, including broad coverage of homeland security issues, the impact of domestic and international terrorism on criminal justice practices and procedures, individual rights in the face of enhanced security; and terrorism prevention, response, and control

Expanded coverage of crime scene investigative strategies and techniques, with special graphics provided by the Massachusetts State Police

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

The attacks of September 11, 2001, changed our nation's course and tested the moral fiber of Americana everywhere. Nowhere outside the armed forces has the terrorist threat been felt more keenly than in the criminal justice area. The 2001 attacks led many to look to our system of justice, and to the people who serve it, for protection and reassurance-protection from threats both internal and external and reassurance that a justice system rooted in the ideals of democracy will continue to offer fairness and equality to all who come before the law.In the years since September 11, strict new laws have been enacted, security efforts have been greatly enhanced, and practitioners of American criminal justice (especially those in law enforcement agencies) have recognized their important role as the first line of defense against threats to the American way of life. As a consequence, the study of criminal justice is more relevant today than ever before.For many, personal involvement in the criminal justice field has become a way of serving our nation and helping to protect our communities. I understand that motivation and applaud it-partially because of the heroism and personal sacrifice it involves, but also because it adds to the important "moral sense" of what we, as Americans, are all about. The justice profession's service role has expanded to include college and university students who, in even greater numbers, are declaring majors in criminal justice. Participation in the criminal justice system, and in the study of criminal justice, offers students a way of personally and meaningfully contributing to our society. It allows those who meet the challenging criteria for successful studies and employment to give something back to the nation and to the communities that nurtured them, and it reaffirms the American way of life by reinforcing the social values on which it is based.Many students are also attracted to criminal justice because it provides a focus for the tension that exists within our society between individual rights and freedoms, on the one hand and the need for public safety, security, and order, on the other, That tension-between individual rights and public order-is the theme around which all editions of this textbook have been built. That same theme is all the more relevant today, for the important question that we have all been asking ourselves in recent years is "How much personal freedom are we willing to sacrifice to achieve a solid sense of security?"While there are no easy answers to this question, this textbook guides criminal justice students in the struggle to find a satisfying balance between freedom and security. True to its origins, the eighth edition focuses directly on the crime picture in America and on the three traditional elements of the criminal justice system: police, courts, and corrections. This edition is enhanced by the addition of Freedom or Safety boxes, which time and again question the viability of our freedoms in a world grown increasingly more dangerous. This edition also asks students to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the American justice system as it struggles to adapt to an increasingly multicultural society and to a society in which the right of a few can threaten the safety of many.It is my hope that this book will ground students in the important issues that continue to evolve from the tension between the struggle for justice and the need for safety. For it is upon that bedrock that the American system of criminal justice stands, and it is on that foundation that the future of the justice system-and of this country-will be built.